{"id":789436,"date":"2026-10-02T08:16:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-02T08:16:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/789436\/"},"modified":"2026-10-02T08:16:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T08:16:10","slug":"celebrity-traitors-has-tamed-our-national-id","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/789436\/","title":{"rendered":"Celebrity Traitors has tamed our national id"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>        <img width=\"1038\" height=\"778\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/2afb9e70-b8c4-11f1-a430-4d16ee157c41-1038x778.jpg\" class=\"attachment-4x3-large-crop size-4x3-large-crop wp-post-image\" alt=\"\" decoding=\"async\" fetchpriority=\"high\"  \/><br \/>\n                Photo via the BBC<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-drop-cap wp-block-paragraph\">Television used to hold a mirror up to the nation. When X-Factor was at the height of its powers in the late 2000s, this was a land of optimists who understood the moral of Simon Cowell\u2019s universe: the right amount of talent, ambition and cruelty could take anyone to the stratosphere, or at least a brief stint at Christmas number one. The difficulties of the intervening decade stamped out that mode of aspiration, naturally. And, well, who has spoken of X-Factor since 2012?<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And so, if mainstream tastes can still tell us anything about the country (more on that \u201cif\u201d later), what to do with Celebrity Traitors? Last season it received on average 13 million views per episode \u2013 Question Time is lucky to get a tenth of that. And if you are an establishment celebrity in 2026 it is where you want to be seen: Amol Rajan is launching his solo media career alongside his appearance in season 2; Michael Sheen, Richard E Grant, Miranda Hart and Romesh Rangathan will be there too. Anyone in search of the hollowed out corpse of the monoculture, look no further.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>                            <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newstatesman.com\/culture\/tv\/2026\/10\/javascript(void);\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/dl6pgk4f88hky.cloudfront.net\/2021\/09\/TNS_master_logo.svg\" class=\"img\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Subscribe to the New Statesman and save 40% for 1 year!<\/p>\n<p>    Content from our partners<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photo via the BBC Television used to hold a mirror up to the nation. When X-Factor was at&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":789437,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-789436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=789436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789436\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/789437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=789436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=789436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=789436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}